Monthly Accomplishments - July 2010

I have been looking at my calendar with my hours in it and it is looking a little light for the month. I think that there was too much celebrating and shopping going on! lol

1. Totally blew my stash report numbers here and here and here and here
   
2. Updated my blog layout and worked with Regina for the Giveaway button
3. Completed Brown Sugar, the second secret quilt, and gave it to my co-worker
4. Organized my current scraps and set up my sewing and staging area with new projects to work on
5. Went shopping with Barb over the 4th of July weekend. I really need to stop shopping with her! lol Although she did help pick out some things for the Giveaways. :)
6. Had my 1,000th post giveaway and 3 year blogiversary in the same month with an awesome celebration! :)
7. Had the new hard drive on the laptop give out on me. :( We survived again, but I am still waiting on my old files to be saved to the external drive that my neighbor has.
8. Finished knitting the sweater front and started on the back
9. Cut fabric for the baseball quilt for 1 neighbor
10. Finished assembling the poinsettia table runner
11. Got windows and a patio door installed and have been enjoying them ever since!
12. Made 12 blocks for the Bento Box quilt
13. Finished assembling the blocks for the Jitterbug quilt and cut the fabric for the borders
14. Sewed 1 strip set of 17 for my neighbor's quilt
15. Cut out another quilt for my second neighbor
16. Cut fabric for 4 tool caddies and 2 Stitch N Chix bag for giveaway prizes. Just a few more things to cut and I will be ready to sew, sew, sew!
17. Oh, I also spent an evening training my mom over the phone on how to use the iPod that I bought her and how to get around in iTunes. My 'lovely' brother just didn't have the patience to do it in person.
    

This month was also light in the reading. I just couldn't seem to get into the books that I was listening to or reading manually.

1. Along Came a Spider by James Patterson - Pretty good, but I didn't care for the narrator. He didn't exactly have a monotone voice, but with the inflections and tones that he did have, he may as well have. It was like he was reading the book in 3 sentence spurts with the same inflections in each set of sentences. Quite annoying after a few discs!
2. The Appeal by John Grisham - This was my first Grisham novel to read. I have seen several movies and liked those, but I never had the intention of reading his books because of how much information is in the movies and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to take it all in with a book format. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to follow along with everything and keep all of the characters straight. I was not happy with how the book ended, but it won't prevent me from reading another of Grisham's books.
3. The Missing by Beverly Lewis - This is the second in the Seasons of Grace series and it was OK. Reading a story of the Amish was a nice break after these first 2. But considering some things that have happened in our family this month, it really bothered me to have to hear about a cancer patient refusing chemo treatment.
4. A Thread So Thin by Marie Bostwick - This is the third in the Cobbled Court Quilt series. The second book was edited horribly with a plethora of misspellings and grammatical errors throughout the book. This book only had 2 that I remember and they were in the last 20 pages. It made quite a difference in my enjoyment! I really liked this book and while it was a little predictable from the beginning, there were still some surprises.
   

Hours spent - Quilting - 32.25; Knitting - 21.25

The pups spent a bit of time working on their projects, too!